Starting a business might sound exciting. But when it comes to finding the right clients, problems are bound to come your way. The fundamentals of every business are the same. Likewise, one of the businesses which have grown exponentially over these years is interior design.
Interior designing is more of a local business. And when it comes to growing a local business a different set of strategies must be followed. Finding the first client might be a challenge but afterward, things will become relatively easy for you. As your business will grow more people will come to know about you. The word-of-mouth spreads faster than fire in the forest!
In the initial phase, many designing companies go through more or less the same problems that include:
- Dealing with extreme market competition
- Finding the right clients that pay well
- Meeting unrealistic client requirements
- Completing multiple projects simultaneously
- Little or no focus on branding and marketing
If a company ignores such problems, it could be catastrophic for its growth. These issues should be addressed before it’s too late. Without saying, if you are starting a business your expertise lies in the core subject. But you might lack the knowledge about marketing and how to grow a local business.
If that is the case, you don’t have to worry. In this post, I will help you discover the secrets of growing an interior designing business from scratch. Trust me you will thank me after reading till the end. You will be empowered to do much better than what you are doing right now!
When your business is new, it is the right time to plan strategies, think to strengthen your weak points, and proceed accordingly. So, the first thing you should do is to strategically plan what exactly you want from your business and at what time. I have shared a detailed guide on how to grow your local business down below.
How to Grow Your Interior Designing Business?
1. Get Your Website Up & Running
Today, starting a business is futile if you don’t have a business website. Hence, the first step is to build a website for your interior designing company. The best way to build your site is to hire a web development agency and tell them that you need a fast, responsive site for your business. They will charge a minimal amount and your site will be ready within a few days. If you already have a website, it is even better. Let’s hop on to the next step.
2. Develop Digital Marketing Strategy
If you think that without digital marketing you can make it through, you are highly mistaken. Digital marketing is the driving force of online businesses. The best marketing strategies can make your company a household name. At the same time, ignoring it will definitely cost you a lot.
If you are not incorporating the practices of digital marketing, you will never reach potential clients. It will result in zero revenue generation and the shutter of your company will be locked down permanently. Therefore, the second step is to develop a digital marketing strategy that helps you reach heights where only the sky is the limit.
Digital marketing is a broad term. There are many sub-categories under it that you need to focus on based on the nature of your target audience. I have further explained the various sub-niches of digital marketing below:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO is one of the most important parts of online marketing. It is crucial to implement SEO optimally if you want plenty of organic traffic on your business site every day. Search engines like Google have certain guidelines which every website needs to follow, strictly speaking. SEO helps you to optimize every single page of your site in accordance with those guidelines. If you are able to develop and implement the right SEO strategy, you will never have to depend on paid advertisements to grow your local business.
The best part about SEO is that you keep on getting continuous traffic even if you stop the optimization for some time in the future. There are three types of SEO namely technical SEO, on-page SEO, and off-page SEO. The technical part is performed while building your site. From site responsiveness to SEO-friendly theme selection and speed optimization is a part of the technical aspect of SEO.
Once you have a technically optimized business website up and running, you need to perform on-page SEO intensively. On-page or on-site optimization includes optimizing every page of your site as per Google guidelines. From meta titles to meta descriptions, an ideal URL and well-written content fall under on-page optimization. Content is the biggest challenge for websites. So, when you develop your content, it should be unique, engaging, and to the point. The content on your site should be made-for-humans, not search engines.
At last, comes the off-page SEO which includes promoting your site on various other digital channels. Majorly, it includes link building using different methodologies and procedures. The off-page optimization of your site is also important, but if you will keep the on-page optimization perfect, you might never need off-page. This is how powerful on-page SEO could be.
Start & Maintain a Blog
Most businesses don’t focus on blogging, and it is one of their biggest mistakes. The potential of blogging should never be misjudged. Through a well-maintained blog, you can drive voluminous targeted traffic to your business website. I know a lot of companies who have never given due importance to blog writing, those companies are still struggling to get clients. On the other hand, there are companies that blog like crazy. Those firms are generating a handsome amount of revenue every month. The choice is yours, where you want to stand!
How to Start a Business Blog?
Well, even if you are not serious about blogging and how it can help you grow your interior designing business from scratch. I will still tell you how to start a business blog. Literally, I want to help you prosper.
Select a Niche: For starting a blog you must have a niche. Most probably, your core business skills should be your blog’s niche. Like, if you own an interior designing company, it would be great if you blog about interior design. Again, interior designing is a broad term, there might be several sub-niches under it. Try not to focus on one, covering them all while blogging should be the way to go. The reason behind it is that when you select a sub or micro niche in blogging, the chances of getting early traffic are very less. But when you will write about interior design, you can cover almost everything that falls beneath it.
Research Main Keywords: Blogging is writing something for the web. But when you write for the web you can’t just create anything that strikes your mind. Before writing you have to decide on two things – primary keywords and blog title. The primary keyword could be a word or a phrase that your target audience is already searching on the internet. There are two types of keywords – short-tail and long-tail. Mostly, the short ones are highly competitive. You might have to struggle for months for getting a ranking for that particular keyword. Today, when we see more businesses coming online, it is always better to research and write on long keywords. It is relatively easy to rank for the long ones. You don’t have to wait for months to rank on the first page of Google if your research on primary long keywords is to the point.
Once you have decided on the primary keywords, you have to write a title that intrigues your prospects to click and see what’s inside. The blog title should always be written in a manner that sparks a desire among people to read the post. The best titles are one that entices people to click on the link. Suppose you have written a detailed and well-researched blog, but you are not getting readers to read it.
Here, I am sure the problem is in your blog title. For example, which title would you click? – How to Make Tea? Or, How to Make Delicious Tea Like Never Before?
Understand this, the life of people is always boring. They need something exciting every time to keep them going. Give them what they always desire to have through your blog titles – excitement or entertainment, for that matter.
Write Problem-Solving Engaging Content:Â There is no use in writing a hypnotizing blog title when the content inside is useless. Starting from the very first paragraph of your blog post right to the conclusion at the bottom, everything written should offer expert insights to the readers. The role of the first para is to make people read the second para, the role of the second para is to make people read the third para, and so on. This cycle goes on and on till the last word of the blog post.
If you are able to place yourself in the shoes of your prospects perfectly, they will never leave your blog unsatisfied. The main purpose of your write-ups should be only one – to provide contentment to your readers. Also, you should keep the tone and the language of the blog in mind while writing. It could be in the best possible interest of your readers if you provide precisely detailed information to them.
The tone of the content should be conversational that should never sound robotic. When you write engaging content in a relaxed and friendly voice the readers are able to connect with the thought of your content. In order to build a connection with people tries sounding as amiably friendly as you possibly could. When you create engaging content, you take a step ahead into the hearts of your target audience members. It would be challenging at first to create content that sounds enticing but as you do, it will become your habit.
Every line and paragraph of the blog should focus on solving the problem of people. If you only talk a little about the mainstream topic of the blog and continue beating around the bush in the entire write-up. Trust me the SEO of your site will start working against the search engine guidelines. And I hope you would never want that to surface. Hence, I would recommend you write informative with a pinch of accuracy and relevancy. Also, include the primary keywords in the blog adequately. Else, it would be considered keyword stuffing, not more than 2% of the total word count.
3. Develop an Email ListÂ
Developing your own email list should be one of your priorities. There are numerous benefits of an email list that you won’t be able to leverage, otherwise. An email is a personal space, people refrain from providing their emails to any random company. But if they know who you are, what you do, and how better you do it, they can probably be your email subscribers.
Through emails, you can inform your audience about your new launches, best offers, and just an update about your new blog post. Whatever you use the email list for just keep in mind you should never share anything irrelevant or boring, for that matter in their inbox.
When you will continuously shoot emails to your subscribers about new interior trends, expert advice, or guides, they will start trusting you more. And, if in the future they ever need an interior designer, the chances of them signing up for your services will grow without bounds. The more subscribers you will have, the more powerful your list will become, and the chances of conversions will increase automatically.
4. Develop an Exceptional Advertising Strategy
I always remember what I say. I have said earlier in this blog that if you do search engine optimization perfectly, you don’t have to depend on paid advertisements. Yes, it is true. However, SEO is a long-term process that can’t yield results in the short term. Initially, when you want to grow your interior designing business from scratch you need to depend upon paid advertising up to a certain extent.
It is crucial for marketers to understand that there is no alternative for anything in the digital marketing world. Every online marketing process that the top marketers follow has certain criteria involved that need to be given due importance separately. If you think by putting all your efforts into one part of your brain you will be able to ignore the rest part of your brain, your brain might not function well.
Likewise, we have marketing. Every aspect of digital marketing should be given due importance if you want your marketing campaign to run viably. Growing your local business will never be a problem if you always care about the bigger picture. Hence, investing your time in paid advertisement is equally significant for the optimal growth of your interior designing business in 2022.
Now, when it comes to paid campaigns, in the first place you need to formulate a strategy to decide on which platforms your ads will perform better. Usually, companies run ads on platforms where their target audience spends most hours of the day. You can run down analysis on platforms where your audience is more active and run ads accordingly.
5. Create a Solid Google Business Profile
Setting up a solid Google business profile can help you more than anything to grow your local business from scratch. After creating a business website, uploading content, and optimizing it, the first priority should be to create your business account on Google. It can help you find the right clients without putting in much of your effort.
How to Optimize Your Google Business Account?
Creating a Google business account is as simple as creating a Facebook account. So, I am not explaining it over here. Let’s hop on to how to optimize Google’s business account perfectly.
- Create your Google Business account by signing up for Google.com/business
- Fill out every basic detail Google asks for such as Name, Address, Phone Number, Website, and Working Hours.
- Once you are done filling in the basic details, you need to provide more details to the search engine such as the Category & Attributes, Products & Services, From the Business, and QNA (owner generated).
- Now, keep updating your business page with posts, genuine reviews, and QNAs (consumer-generated) at regular intervals.
- Make sure your contact information on your business profile is the same as that on your website and other digital platforms like social media.
- Cleverly write your ‘from the business’ section to tell your prospects what you do, how you do it, what price you charge, and what is your expertise. Do not forget to use the primary keywords optimally.
- Choose a category and sub-category of your business profile. It will help you appear in the discovery searches. Choosing the appropriate category improves the authority of the business page.
- Don’t forget to add photos of your business or office. It helps build trust and engagement. Also, your business images can appear in Google business’ search results.
- Keep your Google business profile updated with the latest posts. The post could be about wishing your audience on a special occasion or announcing any new update related to your business.
- Ask and answer questions people. Google likes it when a business profile drives engagement. It is just like a mini blog; the fundamentals of Google are the same across its platforms.
- Set up messaging on your Google My Business profile so that potential customers can directly message on your phone.
6. Establish a Brand for Your Interior Designing Business
In today’s competitive market if your company is not a known brand, people would not like to buy from you. Transforming your interior designing business into a brand is vital to sustaining amid the high competition. Building a brand from scratch in this digital age is very simple. All you need to do is to get and remain in front of the eyes of your prospects all the time. This can be done through paid and organic (SEO) marketing.
Get your brand’s name, logo and slogan sorted in the first place. Identify your target audience and create content to garner their attention. Everything that you do on digital platforms should revolve around the needs, desires, and fears of your potential customers. Sooner, people for whom you are creating content will start connecting with your content. Word of mouth will improve the reach of your website and social accounts, creating a brand for your company.
To Conclude:
Starting and growing a local business doesn’t seem to be an obstacle today for many firms. While it could be harder for some companies to grow their business from scratch. The only difference between success and failure is the right mindset. Before you fail in paid or unpaid marketing campaigns, if you have failed inside your mind, the game is already finished.
Apart from the mindset, you should know what it takes to be a great marketer. It doesn’t matter if it is your first time or you have some experience, if you understand people and their world, you will never fail your interior designing business.
The only challenge that most businesses face is to get a good number of audiences floating on their internet properties. If you are able to fill that gap, trust me, you will never run out of business. The interior designing market is growing like crazy, if you follow everything written in this blog post diligently you can easily grow your local business without struggling initially.
